Sometimes after our workouts I feel completely wiped. (I refer to this as "blowing a gasket"). It's all I can do to drag myself to the car and drive home, which is luckily not very far. Usually it's a sprint workout that will do it. Let's just say that it makes it hard to get work done the rest of the day... Does this happen to anyone else? Any suggestions, other than "don't swim as hard," which seems to be defeat the reason why I am there in the first place? (It doesn't seem to me that I am swimming harder than anyone else).
How much are you cooling down?
Some smart people disagree with this theory, but it is pretty simple to check and see if it helps you.
When you do a hard workout, anything keeps your heart hammering away for a while, I think you need an extended cool down.
When you are swimming, your heart isn't working against gravity and it has the aide of periodic muscle contraction to aide flow. If you skip cool down, or only do a short cool down, your heart is working really hard and then you take away all its help.
An extended cool down is probably a time thing more than a distance thing. When you first finish your hard set, you want to start swimming to have the muscle contraction to help your heart, but as your heart rate begins to slow down and your catch your breath, swimming slower, doing open turns or even stopping on the wall would prepare you for getting out of the water an facing the full effects of gravity.
There was a thread a while ago "Is cool down necessary" where I argued my point and several others supported the counter point if you want to read more about it.
I agree with you 100% on the importance of a good cool down. Unfortunately, our coach sometimes doesn't leave much time for one, and we have another group getting in right after us. But I always take as much time as I can, and sometimes a little more. :) It generally amounts to 100-200 yds.
How much are you cooling down?
Some smart people disagree with this theory, but it is pretty simple to check and see if it helps you.
When you do a hard workout, anything keeps your heart hammering away for a while, I think you need an extended cool down.
When you are swimming, your heart isn't working against gravity and it has the aide of periodic muscle contraction to aide flow. If you skip cool down, or only do a short cool down, your heart is working really hard and then you take away all its help.
An extended cool down is probably a time thing more than a distance thing. When you first finish your hard set, you want to start swimming to have the muscle contraction to help your heart, but as your heart rate begins to slow down and your catch your breath, swimming slower, doing open turns or even stopping on the wall would prepare you for getting out of the water an facing the full effects of gravity.
There was a thread a while ago "Is cool down necessary" where I argued my point and several others supported the counter point if you want to read more about it.
I agree with you 100% on the importance of a good cool down. Unfortunately, our coach sometimes doesn't leave much time for one, and we have another group getting in right after us. But I always take as much time as I can, and sometimes a little more. :) It generally amounts to 100-200 yds.
